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Going Nuclear: Notes from the officially unofficial book tour
I work in the analytical labs at one of Europe’s oldest and largest nuclear sites: Sellafield, in northwestern England. I spend my days at the fume hood front, pipette in one hand and radiation probe in the other (and dosimeter pinned to my chest, of course). Outside the lab, I have a second job: I moonlight as a writer and public speaker. My new popular science book—Going Nuclear: How the Atom Will Save the World—came out last summer, and it feels like my life has been running at full power ever since.
Robert P. Schuman
Nuclear Technology | Volume 65 | Number 3 | June 1984 | Pages 422-431
Technical Paper | Radioactive Waste Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT84-A33398
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Two leach-resistant waste forms, a borosilicate glass developed for the high-level waste calcines from reprocessed uranium fuels and iron-enriched basalt, a fused ceramic developed for americium plus plutonium wastes, have been leach tested. The specimens were leached in distilled deionized water and in a saturated salt brine at ∼30°C for 28, 63, and 126 days; one set was leached in a gamma field of ∼104 Gy/h (∼106 rad/h). The specimens were simulated high-level waste forms prepared from inactive ingredients and spiked with 22Na, 60Co, 95Zr-95Nb, 137Cs, 133Ba, 144Ce, and 241Am. The components were melted and heat treated, and specimens were sawed from the solidified material. The gamma field increased the leach rates in water (pH ∼3 after irradiation) typically by a factor of ∼10 and increased the leach rates in salt brine (pH decreased much less during irradiation) by a factor of ∼2. The leach rate of cobalt from glass was about seven times that from iron-enriched basalt. The leach rates usually decreased with increasing leach time. Both waste forms were still leach resistant in irradiated brine at 30°C, <2 µg/cm2·day, and fairly leach resistant in irradiated water at 30°C, <25 µg/cm2·day.